Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Sign OF/1B Nick Swisher to a seven year, $100 million contract.
Sign OF Melky Cabrera to a one year, $6 million (plus incentives) contract .
Sign SP Carlos Villanueva to a one year, $4 million contract.
Sign DH Travis Hafner to a one year, $3 million contract.
Re-sign SP Hisashi Iwakuma to a two year, $10 million contract.
Re-sign SP Jason Vargas to a two year, $12 million contract.
Trade 1B Mike Carp and OF Trayvon Robinson for IF Sean Rodriguez and C Chris Gimenez

Reader Comments and Retorts

Statements posted here are those of our readers and do not represent the BaseballThinkFactory. Names are provided by the poster and are not verified. We ask that posters follow our submission policy. Please report any inappropriate comments.

Swisher should scare the heck out of anyone at this stage of his career - I wouldn't want to sign him to anything more than a 3-year deal. He's got the kind of skill set where he could just fall off the cliff in a year or two if he loses any bat speed at all.

Sean Rodriguez is the type of player that the Rays tend to overvalue; Mike Carp is the type of player that the Rays don't value much at all. That trade will never happen.

Swisher should scare the heck out of anyone at this stage of his career - I wouldn't want to sign him to anything more than a 3-year deal. He's got the kind of skill set where he could just fall off the cliff in a year or two if he loses any bat speed at all.

Yeah, this -- 7/100?

Is he worth 7/100 even if he can sustain his current production? I know I've always underrated Swisher and just looking at his numbers closely, I further recognize that I am now... but, he's a 31 yo corner OF. A good one, yes (is he even "very good"?) - but to me, the only way I'm spending something approaching that sort of commitment is to a true star on the order of a, I don't know, Ryan Braun or a Manny Rameriz type... I realize you don't get a Ryan Braun or Manny for 7/100 on the open market, but I'm just saying that position scarcity means I'd only spend a premium for a relatively easy spot to fill if I was filling it with a truly premium bat.

I'd do it for a legit CF, a MI, maybe a 3B or a cather... but not for 1B/LF/RF, at least, not a 31 yo one.

Re-signing Vargas may not be the best idea. Bringing in the left field fences may hurt his effectiveness tremendously. In 14 starts at Safeco, he gave up nine home runs and had a .327 SLP against; in 19 starts on the road he gave up 26 home runs, and had a .495 SLP against. If the new dimensions bring his home stats more in line with his road stats, he's in trouble...

I really like Carlos Villanueva. Unfortunately, he seems incapable of having an entire good year. He'll go 3 months in a row just dominating people and then he'll be absolutely terrible for 2. I hope he's able to be more consistently good for whoever signs him.

I'd guess more like 4/60 or 5/75 for Swisher 5/90 if somebody got crazy.

5/90 is more expensive than 7/100. 7/100 is like 5/90 but with a cheap 2/10 tacked on. Except even that even more money gets pushed off further into the future, so even if he had no value in 5 years, just spreading the cost out more by itself could be worth it.

I see no reason at all to trade Carp. The market for him is likely nil, and yet he's only 6 months older than Smoak and has been both a better hitter and fielder than Smoak in his career. _Maybe_ Smoak still has a little bit of that prospect shine left on him, or even if he doesn't you'd still guess he'd fetch more in a trade than Carp. If you're going to move one, I think Smoak makes more sense.

Then again I'm not overly enthralled with Rodriguez (particularly since the M's look set at second and third) or Gimenez either.

As I keep saying, with the new TV money and most of the good ones signed up long-term, there's some crazy money in baseball right now. $/WAR on the FA market is probably gonna be $6 maybe $6.5. Swisher for 3/$51 (say) might not be as nuts as it sounds. If you can tack on another 4 years at $49 (by which time $/WAR might be more along the lines of $7-7.5) you're only asking him to be a 1.5 win nice bench player in the out years. I still can't see anybody giving him 7 but who saw 6/$100 or 7/$119 for Lee and Soriano and that was ages ago.

I suppose you make a similar argument for Vargas. 2/$12 is nothing for a starter. Luke Hochevar gets paid nearly that. And Hafner at 1/$3 ... it's gonna have to be incentive-laden but that's easily worth a shot. And what is Iwakuma's situation?

Carlos Villanueva has been very useful for the Jays over the last couple years. I'd expect his numbers to improve next year, if he can find a team willing to put him into the rotation and leave him there, rather than being split half-and-half between the bullpen and rotation.

With that being said, I'd expect him to get more than one year, four million. There just aren't many good starting pitching options available as free agents, so the few guys who have recently been non-awful in the role are likely to get heavily bid up.

On the one hand, Swisher's potentially fairly meh into his mid-thirties. On the other hand, if you're looking for a bat with this offseason free agent crop, where else are you going to go? Zombie Berkman?

Which actually is why Melky probably won't be available for $6 million plus incentives. Teams looking for offense will have to hold their noses and pony up.

As I keep saying, with the new TV money and most of the good ones signed up long-term, there's some crazy money in baseball right now. $/WAR on the FA market is probably gonna be $6 maybe $6.5. Swisher for 3/$51 (say) might not be as nuts as it sounds. If you can tack on another 4 years at $49 (by which time $/WAR might be more along the lines of $7-7.5) you're only asking him to be a 1.5 win nice bench player in the out years. I still can't see anybody giving him 7 but who saw 6/$100 or 7/$119 for Lee and Soriano and that was ages ago.

I could maybe see a 3/$51 sort of deal for Swisher, especially for one of the richer teams whose window is right now (Yankees, Detroit, Anaheim?), but asking for 1.5 WAR out of age 35-38 Swisher is probably not realistic. He doesn't have a broad skillset, and in his 8 years as a full time player has already put up 4 seasons of 1.7 WAR or less. That just doesn't look like a guy you'd expect to age very well in his mid-late 30s.

1) Lobby MLB to eliminate the 3B position
2) Drug Casey Coleman and Matt Cain and convince each of them they are the other, have some seedy surgeon perform a Face/Off surgery, profit
3) Temporarily combine Brett Jackson and Starlin Castro into a single batter, once their diametrically opposing holes in approach at the plate have been 'healed' by the other's strengths, separate them back into two players
4) Get the Astros back into the NL Central

1) Lobby MLB to eliminate the 3B position
2) Drug Casey Coleman and Matt Cain and convince each of them they are the other, have some seedy surgeon perform a Face/Off surgery, profit
3) Temporarily combine Brett Jackson and Starlin Castro into a single batter, once their diametrically opposing holes in approach at the plate have been 'healed' by the other's strengths, separate them back into two players
4) Get the Astros back into the NL Central

Meh. It's probably as good a plan as any. Maybe rummage around the Ivy to see if you can pull out an Andre Dawson or a Billy Williams.

5/90 is more expensive than 7/100. 7/100 is like 5/90 but with a cheap 2/10 tacked on. Except even that even more money gets pushed off further into the future, so even if he had no value in 5 years, just spreading the cost out more by itself could be worth it.

Right, so why would Swisher take it? He's better off taking 5/90 and rolling the dice that he's still good, or inflation explodes.

7/100 is too many years for the team, and too low an AAV for the player.

5/90 is more expensive than 7/100. 7/100 is like 5/90 but with a cheap 2/10 tacked on. Except even that even more money gets pushed off further into the future, so even if he had no value in 5 years, just spreading the cost out more by itself could be worth it.

Right, so why would Swisher take it? He's better off taking 5/90 and rolling the dice that he's still good, or inflation explodes.

7/100 is too many years for the team, and too low an AAV for the player.

7/100 is probably better for the team, and worse for the player, than 5/90. Having rights to a player for more years is good for the team, not the opposite.

What are the chances a 36 yo Swisher gets 2/15 or better for his age 37 & 38 seasons?

Seriously. Swisher was a coin flip to give you more than 1.7 WAR during his prime. He's more likely to be completely worthless as a player by the time he's 37 than he is to be getting a multi year contract.

Frankly I find the idea of giving Nick Swisher a 7 year deal laughable, even at $100 million. He's just not that good, and he's much too old for it. I think the odds are good he'll be out of baseball before 7 years are up.

I think that it's good that Dave puts out a specific plan out there, from memory he has in the past under priced the contracts or massively overrated what he could probably get in the trades, but at least he is willing to give concrete examples of what he would look into doing.

I think that it's good that Dave puts out a specific plan out there, from memory he has in the past under priced the contracts or massively overrated what he could probably get in the trades, but at least he is willing to give concrete examples of what he would look into doing.

And since this plan is based on free agents rather than trades, we can look at the contracts the players actually get and compare them to what Dave thinks the Mariners could have gotten. It's much more susceptible to testing after the fact!

1. Sign Josh Hamilton to a 5 year, $100 million contract. It's a low pressure situation, he'll hit great in this park, and there aren't that many temptations around, unless he's going to get addicted to mountain biking. Gonzalez-Fowler-Hamilton has the potential to be the best outfield in the league.
2. Move Cuddyer to first base, in a semi-platoon with Helton, who can take over Giambi's old job.
3. Name Giambi hitting coach.
4. Find a young, hungry manager who hasn't managed in the majors before to lend a sense of urgency to the club. Ryne Sandberg would do.
5. Throw Wilin Rosario 100 pitches in the dirt every day during the off-season until he learns how to stop them.
6. Trade Chris Nelson and Tyler Colvin to the Nationals for Ross Detwiler.
7. Go into the season with a rotation of Pomeranz, Chacin, Francis, Detwiler and Nicasio, with Alex White and Tyler Chatwood in long relief, ready to step in.
8. Give Nolan Arenado the job at third base, and Josh Rutledge the job at second.

I think Swisher has what Bill James would call old player skills, and such players tend not to age well, so 7 years sounds especially crazy. Interestingly, Swisher's career, starting from his 2nd year, has been insanely consistent with only one dud in the bunch.

OPS+ from 2006-2012: 125, 126, 93, 122, 129, 120, 126

And over that 7-year period, from age 25 to 31, he has played between 148 and 157 games every year.

I have to confess, he has been a much better, certainly much more consistent, player than I instinctively thought. It will be interesting to see how he does in the FA market. Doesn't that team in Boston have a bunch of money freed up?

I see no reason at all to trade Carp. The market for him is likely nil, and yet he's only 6 months older than Smoak and has been both a better hitter and fielder than Smoak in his career. _Maybe_ Smoak still has a little bit of that prospect shine left on him, or even if he doesn't you'd still guess he'd fetch more in a trade than Carp. If you're going to move one, I think Smoak makes more sense.

ditto
except I don't think Smoak has any trade value at this point either.

I could maybe see a 3/$51 sort of deal for Swisher, especially for one of the richer teams whose window is right now (Yankees, Detroit, Anaheim?), but asking for 1.5 WAR out of age 35-38 Swisher is probably not realistic. He doesn't have a broad skillset, and in his 8 years as a full time player has already put up 4 seasons of 1.7 WAR or less. That just doesn't look like a guy you'd expect to age very well in his mid-late 30s.

I wouldn't sign him to a long-term deal either, but using fWAR he's only had one season below 1.7 WAR (his disaster season with Chicago). Every other year besides his rookie season he's been at 3 WAR or higher. I think he's probably an average or slightly better defender in RF and at 1B (which UZR and TZ agree with), so coupling that with a wRC+ over 120 basically every year and I think rWAR is the one missing on him.

I wouldn't sign him to a long-term deal either, but using fWAR he's only had one season below 1.7 WAR (his disaster season with Chicago). Every other year besides his rookie season he's been at 3 WAR or higher. I think he's probably an average or slightly better defender in RF and at 1B (which UZR and TZ agree with), so coupling that with a wRC+ over 120 basically every year and I think rWAR is the one missing on him.

I agree with this. That's why I'd be OK with a high AAV shortish deal from the Yanks. Maybe 4/65?

I've always wanted to arrange some sort of Winter Meetings "War Games"-type simulation where we have 30 volunteers to stand in as each GM, and one volunteer to act as the agent for all prominent free agents. Then let everyone try to negotiate trades and free agent contracts and see who ends up where and for how much. I wonder if we'd pay far less than the market, or if we would get caught up in the bidding too.

I've always wanted to arrange some sort of Winter Meetings "War Games"-type simulation where we have 30 volunteers to stand in as each GM, and one volunteer to act as the agent for all prominent free agents.

Colvin had more WAR than Detwiler this year, so by the Dave Cameron Rules, you are HONOR-BOUND to accept my trade proposal. (I should have left Nelson out of it, since his defense brings him to negative WAR.)

Colvin had more WAR than Detwiler this year, so by the Dave Cameron Rules, you are HONOR-BOUND to accept my trade proposal. (I should have left Nelson out of it, since his defense brings him to negative WAR.)

I forgot we were playing Dave Cameron rules. I'd have the Royals offer Greg Holland, Jarrod Dyson, Luis Mendoza, and Kelvin Herrera for David Price and the Rays would HAVE to take it because they are actually getting more WAR out of the deal.

If aliens learned about baseball from this site they would think that John Danks was some legendary pitcher, jeesh.

It was about a lot more than John Danks.

1. It overvalued Jose Lopez to a great degree.
2. Even if the valuation of Lopez was correct, it overvalued average second baseman to a great degree.
3. It overvalued throw-ins (despite Vargas' career success). You can't just add players to a trade until you have equal value.
4. Cameron seemed to think that a 5-win player signed to the correct contract and a 3-win player signed to the correct contract are equal since neither has surplus value, which ignores things like limited roster space and the availability of top talent.

It seems like a lot of these contracts are at the absolute bottom of the expected range. I mean you might get Melky for 1/$6. But there are 29 other GMs and why can't one of them replicate Cameron's thought processes about Melky having produced while clean and possibly having upside? So he might also go for 2/$25.

Similarly it seems that 1/$3 is about as little as you could expect to pay Hafner. (Unless he's in bad shape physically and everyone knows it, in which case 1/$3 isn't much of a bargain.)

I say the biggest pay cut is going to go to Jeremy Guthrie. $8.5M? Holy ####### bananas! And the biggest pay increase to Colby Lewis.

Colby Lewis has already signed an extension for less money.

And Jeremy Guthrie was great for the Royals down the stretch, meaning they will massively overpay for him. People on the radio were saying the Royals should offer as high as 3/$24 mill for him which is batshit insane.

It seems like you're trying to have it both ways by saying the performance since then of Lopez affects the plausibility of the trade proposal but the performance of Vargas doesn't.

No, what everyone was saying at the time was that Lopez wasn't all that valuable because he was an OBA black hole, and Vargas didn't project to be that good going forward either. It wasn't all that plausible a deal at the time, however, had it been executed in real life, it wouldn't have seemed quite as ridiculous in retrospect because of Vargas' performance exceeding expectations.

It seems like you're trying to have it both ways by saying the performance since then of Lopez affects the plausibility of the trade proposal but the performance of Vargas doesn't.

I feel like Lopez was picked on purpose, but Vargas was picked randomly (there's no discussion of him in the original article or the comments from USS Mariner) and just represented "5th starter." Dave could just as well have said Ryan Rowland-Smith.

I feel like Lopez was picked on purpose, but Vargas was picked randomly (there's no discussion of him in the original article or the comments from USS Mariner) and just represented "5th starter." Dave could just as well have said Ryan Rowland-Smith.

Concur. Vargas was a throw in, not a piece that was considered to have real value.

No, what everyone was saying at the time was that Lopez wasn't all that valuable because he was an OBA black hole, and Vargas didn't project to be that good going forward either. It wasn't all that plausible a deal at the time, however, had it been executed in real life, it wouldn't have seemed quite as ridiculous in retrospect because of Vargas' performance exceeding expectations.

Of course, given his FB tendencies as a LH, it's pretty likely that Vargas would NOT have exceeded expectations in Chicago. Vargas has a career 662 home OPS against, and a 809 on the road.

I feel like Lopez was picked on purpose, but Vargas was picked randomly (there's no discussion of him in the original article or the comments from USS Mariner) and just represented "5th starter." Dave could just as well have said Ryan Rowland-Smith.

Concur. Vargas was a throw in, not a piece that was considered to have real value.

All I was saying is that if we are looking at the post-proposal performance of Lopez, we should also do that for the other players involved regardless of their status as a throw-in.

Great googly-moogly!!! You don't even need to know how things look in hindsight (Pineda didn't pitch this year, League is a middle reliever, Figgins was even worse in '12 than in '11 (who'd have thought that???), and Triunfel is losing his prospectness because he can't hit; I missed that Halman was murdered in the off-season) to see this was laughable.

With hindsight? This would have been not just the worst trade in Reds history, nor the worst in baseball history, it would have lapped the field of "worst trades in sports history".

They have a mighty high bar to climb, considering they traded a 19 year old Christy Mathewson for the shell of Amos Rusie.

Granted this was more an attempt to scam Norfolk out of $5,000 (for whatever reason, the Reds had no interest in Mathewson. Goes down on the list of famous bad scouting calls) but the fact is they had Matty and traded him.

Oh and in the poetic justice department, Norfolk (represented by Monte Ward) sued the Giants and won the $5K. By the time the judgment came down the Giants were owned by the guy who owned the Reds at the time of the scam.